Take Back the Night is a call for action in its title that applies to victims of sexual assault and survivors who aren’t believed by society. It’s a film that wears it’s good intentions on its sleeve, and the heavy-hammering of the metaphor could be seen as distracting, it reminded me of the good-will behind the movie that didn’t fully save it for me, but helped me forgive some of the problems with the film.

Jane (Emma Fitzpatrick) is a woman who after a late-night of partying is attacked in a violent manner that evokes images of rape. Before the attack, another male will not allow her to leave the confined alley because he doesn’t like her answer when he asks what she’s going to sexually do for him. She wakes up in a hospital with a police detective questioning her. The detective is on her side, at first, until Jane’s story becomes filled with inconsistencies, most of which can simply be explained by memory lapses.

Take Back the Night hits on everything in the public conversation about rape culture. From women not being believed, to being overly-questioned and making the victim feel like the guilty party, to what they wear to what drugs they may have been on at the time.

Again, the intentions are great, but it feels like a script going down and hitting all the PowerPoints without properly being ingrained into the story. Along with some jarringly amateurish filmmaking at times, you focus mostly on the allegory and then begin to approach a piece of narrative like it’s a TED Talk. It doesn’t fully work as a film, but any movie that ends with the national suicide hotline and a hotline for sexual assault victims at least acknowledges that being the best movie in the world was not really the intention all along and sometimes just getting the message out is enough.